But why pick on mothers who stay at home?

When my two sons were pre-school age, my husband and I had dinner with Margaret Thatcher. She had only recently left office and I recall feeling slightly shamefaced when she asked me what I did.

‘Actually I don’t do very much – although I am thinking of going back to work,’ I hazarded, not wishing to admit to the world’s most powerful and pre-eminent woman that I had actually made a considered decision to relinquish my career in order to stay at home and raise my children.

I imagined the former prime minister would be unimpressed; actually she applauded me. ‘My dear, you should not rush back to work. It just isn’t worth it. Your children need you.’

Ill- judged: Many argue that the Government's new child benefit policy would make life 'even tougher' for traditional families and stay-at-home mothers

Boris says he has accrued enough in child benefits for his four children to pay for ten skiing holidays

To this day, I recall feeling at once grateful that I did not have to embark on an exercise in self-justification, and pleased that a woman of such formidable political standing should recognise the value of my role as a stay-at-home mum.

I do not know whether Baroness Thatcher harbours any regrets about the time she spent away from her own two children to pursue her political career – and it would have been presumptuous of me to have asked.

What I can be certain of, however, is that she would never have acted to diminish both the status of mothers who choose to raise their own children, and the importance of the traditional nuclear family, as her successor David Cameron has with his ill-judged and shambolic changes to child benefit payments.

The Government’s new policies are iniquitous on so many levels.

There is no logic or common sense in a
system that withdraws child benefit entirely from households where a
single breadwinner earns £60,000, while families in which both parents
work and can earn up to £49,000 each – giving them a combined income of
£98,000 – do not forfeit a single penny.

He may claim to be family friendly, but David Cameron's efforts to bring the care of children under state control will, in effect, serve to nationalise childhood

However, the Government has now gone one step further. It has compounded a grossly inequitable system by explicitly favouring households in which both parents work.

Last week it announced its intention to give such couples £2,000-a-year in tax breaks towards childcare.

This move only serves to further
penalise those mothers who opt to do what, in my view, is the most vital
job of all: Raising their own children at home.

David Cameron purports to be family
friendly. Yet in adopting this discriminatory policy he is, I believe,
even surpassing – in all the wrong ways – the last Labour government.

I do not know whether Baroness Thatcher (seen here with her twins Mark and Carol) harbours any regrets about the time she spent away from her own two children to pursue her political career

His efforts to bring the care of children under state control will, in
effect, serve to nationalise childhood.

Not
for a second do I advocate that mothers should be forced to stay at
home and care for their pre-school age children. Indeed, to deny women
the option of returning to work would be as retrograde a step as
compelling them to do so – as this Government seems intent on doing –
through ill-judged fiscal policies.

Twenty-five
years ago, I abandoned a well-paid and prestigious career in television
– I was features editor on TV-AM – to become a full-time mum, though I
had not intended to give up work at all.

However, I had not bargained for the awful anxiety and physical distress I felt when I had to leave my one-year-old baby in the care of someone else. I managed to juggle work and home for 11 months, but I was so racked with sorrow and yearning, that in the end I capitulated.

I gave up work to look after my first son then remained at home when my second was born. Because my husband worked at as TV executive, I was very lucky to be able to afford to stay at home with my children.

Of course, I recognise that many economically hard-pressed families need a second income, and that many mothers really want to work. But how can it be right for the Government to penalise further those who are determined to be full-time mothers, by withdrawing a benefit that is worth £1,752 a year to a couple with two children, once the main bread-winner earns £60,000?

Treasury Minister David Gauke has accused the middle classes of ‘fiscal nimbyism’ and has said that families will ‘just have to cope’ with the loss of their child benefits allowance as he and his wife have done. Boris Johnson, meanwhile, contends in typically rascally fashion that he has accrued enough in child benefits for his four children to pay for ten half-decent skiing holidays or a cellar-full of Chateau Lafite.

However, the Mayor of London’s comments are unhelpful and bear little relation to the reality. I have friends with husbands working hard on national average incomes who are struggling against heavy financial odds to be full-time mothers.

They all have two, three or more children from infant age upwards, and they want desperately to be at home with them. They have given up even modest summer holidays abroad – let alone skiing trips – and would consider a cellar of wine an unreachable extravagance.

Quite simply, they want to give their children the best start, and in their view this means not abandoning them to some hard-pressed childminder or to a nursery which cannot possibly give them the quality of care and attention – never mind the love – that a mother would.

One friend, who cares for her children
at home, has a lawyer husband earning £60,000. Following the changes to
child benefit, her family will be worse off by £6,726 each year than her
neighbours, both of whom work and earn £40,000 and £20,000
respectively.

Married couples: The government has compounded a grossly inequitable system by explicitly favouring households in which both parents work

So why does this Government persist in policies which, on the face of it, seem to be legislative attempts force mothers back to work?

I was fortunate in that I was able to raise my sons in the love, warmth and care of their own home. The fact that they have grown into fulfilled, well-adjusted and happy adults is, I hope, in no small measure down to the fact that they were not shunted between a succession of strangers when they were infants.

I fervently wish the Government would help, not hamper, mothers who want to do as I did. It should end the folly of its new child benefit system now, before it is too late. And, like Mrs Thatcher, it should recognise both the cost and social value of raising children.